PROVIDENCE — Students will snooze through first period. They won’t be able to socialize with different groups of friends during lunch. Grades will surely suffer because students will be so bored.

Classical High School students are in a snit over the School Department’s plan to adopt a fixed class schedule in all its high schools this fall, a plan that students say will lead to academic ruin.

In the waning days of school, Madeleine Siegmund, a junior, gathered 245 signatures on a petition that implores school officials to abandon plans to impose a fixed six-period day. In her eloquent, two-page letter, Siegmund calls her missive “a protest to every single day being on the same time.”

“In the teenage mind,” she writes, “interest leads to motivation. Too much mind-numbing repetition lowers interest and drive. … The great majority of students regard it as near torture to have every class at the same time, every day, every week, every month, all year.”

Madeleine’s mother, Carmel McGill, who is also president of the school’s Parent-Teacher Organization, couldn’t agree more and has appealed to school administrators for relief.

“Having a rotating schedule allows our students to have a breather every day,” said Laura Gallagher, who will be a junior this fall. “It makes every day less boring, monotone and unappealing. From a social perspective, it’s better to have rotation so that lunches will be different. Nobody wants leftovers in C lunch every day.”

But school officials say that in a district with 23,300 students and 13 high schools, consistency is a must, especially since students change schools frequently. A fixed six-period day will allow department heads to have common planning time and make it easier for students to set up internships and enroll in college courses, according to Nkoli Onye, executive director of high schools.

“The class schedule, in and of itself, doesn’t do anything,” Onye said. “It’s about what we do with the schedule.”

But some Classical students worry that a fixed schedule will wreak havoc with their first-period class. Pity the teenager who routinely arrives at school 10 minutes late. With a rotating schedule, which is what Classical has now, that student doesn’t have to worry about being late for the same subject day after day.

“The good thing about this school was the schedule,” says Stephanie Acebebo, a senior. “Every day, it was something different. A lot more kids will bunk class, especially if they come in late.”

Siegmund says that Rhode Island Public Transit Authority buses, which most high school students in Providence rely on for transportation, are not always reliable. Sometimes, she says, they are late; sometimes, they are early and sometimes, the RIPTA bus is full and blasts right past the waiting student.

What about a teenager’s circadian rhythm? The new schedule, Siegmund says, ignores research that shows that teenagers are not fully awake until an hour after they wake up. Again, this means that the first period of the day suffers.

“If there is the same class first period every morning and the student is either exhausted or late,” Siegmund says, “he or she will most likely fail that class because of the limited ability to participate fully. CUTTING CLASSES WILL BECOME AN EPIDEMIC.”

lborg@projo.com